


Sometimes

by Achleys



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Established Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham, Hannibal Lecter is the Chesapeake Ripper, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multiple Personalities, Sort Of, Will Graham Knows, Will Graham is a Mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:08:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26590393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Achleys/pseuds/Achleys
Summary: After learning Hannibal is the Chesapeake Ripper, Will cannot stay away.  And so he comes, although he is rarely himself.  Sometimes, Will comes to him hungry.  Sometimes, like a teenager and sometimes like the undead.  Until he fails to come at all.Sometimes, Will comes to him hungry.When he does, there is a waxed, lean look to him, an ominous tilt to his head, a brittle smile that blossoms red around chalky, flaked lips. Will’s tongue will dart out, quick and wet, so Hannibal can see a flash of white coating along it.  Another sign of Will’s fall into starvation, and enough that he knows Will has walked days to find him.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 5
Kudos: 47





	Sometimes

Sometimes, Will comes to him hungry.

When he does, there is a waxed, lean look to him, an ominous tilt to his head, a brittle smile that blossoms red around chalky, flaked lips. Will’s tongue will dart out, quick and wet, so Hannibal can see a flash of white coating along it. Another sign of Will’s fall into starvation, and enough that he knows Will has walked days to find him. 

It is a rare thing indeed for Hannibal to see Will hungry. In his office, in his bed, reading beside the fireplace in his study, his eyes will unfocus or his pulse will hitch. A battering ram that is less a battering ram than it is a shiver of instinct that rolls with teeth down his spine warns him of a predator’s nearby gait. His grip on a medical journal, his sheets will tighten. 

And if he is careful – and only when he is careful - does he sometimes find Will first. If the light on the logs is low enough, if the ascending anguish heavy in Will’s gut renders him incautious, Hannibal will glance across the dark spread of his lawn and see him. 

Will prowls before he comes. 

Crouched, spread wide, he lopes with a furor among Hannibal’s rose bushes. 

Long ago, Hannibal learned to leave his front door unlocked. Since, he has learned too to unlock the glass door to his study. When he does not, if he ignores Will’s mounting tension, Will finds him in his bedroom. It is forever a surprise and then, really, no surprise at all to wake to Will perched like a fey on his bedroom sill.

Will is a man, and he is starving. And it is only when he can no longer bare the weight of it that he comes. 

Will’s hunger, it tastes of iodine and copper, disinfectant and the sweet, fruity burn of ketones. Each of his scents, his flavors, that intricate balance that brings Will to the peak of his hunger, they are logged and categorized and stitched into Hannibal’s forebrain like a dread waiting to be unspooled. 

Sometimes, with the effort of grass and loam at the heels of his feet, Will lets Hannibal tend to his wounds. Snarling and snapping, his eyes flickering around Hannibal’s bathroom, Will both eases into Hannibal’s careful attention to the rose briars caught and petulant in his skin as much as he allows a growl to build beneath his ribcage. 

He never lets Hannibal anywhere near his face and, in the end, Hannibal is grateful. If only so he can awake to faint red smears on his hands, his torso, his sheets. He touches each discolored mark with the pads of his fingers. Even if – _because_ – by then, Will is gone.

Will smells like the forest when he comes. Like the earth. Like gin and dirt, weak with sweat. 

“You’re the Chesapeake Ripper,” Will had said those weeks ago. At his kitchen island, Hannibal had tilted his head, raised his eyes to better capture Will’s expression. 

There will be money on the kitchen island before the frangible cast of morning light destroys them both. Hannibal cannot know what Will spends it on, will not ask. But images of Will, warm in the backseat of a taxicab, surrounded by crumpled bags bearing the emblem of the nearest fast food restaurant, they are enough.

Will places his open mouth across Hannibal’s forearm as Hannibal sutures a third stitch to the damage Will’s wandering has done to his chest. When Hannibal smiles, Will brings a finger to press against an incisor just visible between Hannibal’s parted lips. He grips Will’s wrist in warning and Will smiles back.

Later still, when Hannibal is abrading the skin of Will’s neck, or torso, or thighs with an efficiency he is certain disquiets Will, does Will place an open-mouthed bite to the nearest of Hannibal’s fingers. Will’s eyes go round when Hannibal adjusts his grip to press his finger hard against Will’s tongue.

There are no teeth like this. Will is open and willing and the riotous rumble of his growl is replaced by something entirely more human. 

The noises are less profane than Will himself; keening and growling and gnashing, and they poke at Hannibal’s seams until he is willing to loose himself, boneless, into the feeling of Will fractured.

It is then, and only then, that Hannibal lets Will take him.

* * * * *

Sometimes, Will comes to him like a teenager.

Skittish, raw, his fists curled and consumed by the hem of his shirt. Hannibal sees him as a series of flinching blushes and longs for watercolors.

When Hannibal opens his front door, he says, “Will,” with a near-perfected mix of mild surprise and anticipation. He looms and smiles with teeth and the nervous glances Will gives to the outline of his body are enough to fling him forward, churning air over a precipice he does not know how to come back from.

“Hi, Dr. Lecter.” Will’s shoulders twitch and he looks at the threshold to Hannibal’s house, his shoes, whatever bits and pieces of Hannibal’s foyer he can see, standing as he is on the far side of Hannibal’s front porch.

When Will is like this, abashed and cracked along the most stolid planes of soul and skin, Hannibal does not need the yawning maw of Will’s knowledge to confirm the fury that has arisen between them. It is already so cleanly, so _beautifully_ imprinted deep into every gesture Will makes.

_You’re the Chesapeake Ripper._

Hannibal steps back, one arm open towards the mouth of his manor, and Will ducks his head, blushes, but he comes.

In the foyer, Will stands on coltish legs. Hannibal closes the front door and hears the hitch of Will’s breath before he turns back. He pins the teenager to the nearest wall with a shoulder, spreads Will’s legs with a swift thrust of his knee, and whispers, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Will squirms against instinct. Hannibal leans into his hold.

“Doctor-doctor-“

“Tell me what you will give me for intruding into my evening.”

In those first weeks, long ago, Will had whispered _everything_ with a quiet terror that had brought Hannibal to his knees. Now, Hannibal braces himself, pushes harder against the spread of Will’s chest as though he can force Will to _feel_ , to _remember_ , as Will whispers back, “Everything I can.”

* * * * *

Sometimes, Will comes to him as himself. It is only then Hannibal fears he will not survive the night.

It is with a sort of petulant glee that Hannibal finds he cannot always tell when Will has come as himself and when he has come hungry. It exists as a separate thing, beautiful and writhing under the focused glare of Hannibal’s automatic porch lights. A miasma of chapped lips and furrowed brows and scratched cheeks. Whether from Hannibal’s rose bushes or the anxious press of Will’s own nails, Hannibal finds it matters little.

Until, of course, Will croaks, “You absolute fucking bastard,” and launches himself across the front porch.

Will aims low, always aims low, seeking to unbalance. But by then Hannibal is already standing on feet shoulder-width apart. His torso is already flexed, and so he will always catch Will neatly in his arms.

Will says the same thing he always says, in a voice many octaves too high. “ _Stop touching me!_ ”

Hannibal throws him back, pivots, and lets Will launch himself at nothing. Will catches himself on the island counter. His hand flicks towards the knife block Hannibal has already divested of its contents. It is then that Will frowns, straightens, looks around the kitchen.

Hannibal lunges.

* * * * * 

Sometimes, Will comes to him like the undead.

Stiff, pale, reeking of unwash and dog, he is a statute in Hannibal’s kitchen. It is only when Will is like this that Hannibal can touch him in all those thoughtless, careless ways that burn like an omen beneath his skin.

“Will?” he says, with a hand cupped around the back of Will’s neck, his other hand pressed to Will’s chest, knowing Will cannot and will not refuse him. “Will, can you hear me?”

“Will?” he asks, the man’s chin gripped between steady fingers, his other hand deep into brown curls. “Will, can you hear me?”

“Will, come with me,” he says, one hand on Will’s shoulder, the other at the small of his back, guiding them to the study and before the fireplace.

Weeks ago, Hannibal had not known what to do with this Will. He has since learned too many of his first attempts had involved unhelpful efforts at eye contact and words.

But Hannibal does not miss the glassy, half-masted stare, the slack-jawed benevolence that reigns like a flickering aura around Will when he answers the front door. Has found that the touch of his hands over Will, the way Will sags so completely into the spread of his arms, has not yet failed to bring Will back to himself.

And so, Hannibal touches and runs his fingers and caresses.

On a couch in the study, Hannibal pets a hand through greasy, unkempt hair and bundles blankets around them. He speaks words in French, in Latin, in Italian, until Will finally grows still beneath him. He runs the tips of his fingers over slackened cheekbones, ribs, hips, and closes his eyes to the thrill of atoms bursting under his fingernails.

“Sleep,” Hannibal whispers and it is all Will ever needs to surrender to his fatigue.

Hannibal will always, has always, spent such nights in an awakened peace he has yet to discover elsewhere.

* * * * * 

Sometimes, Will comes to him as a puppy.

With his mouth open, tongue wet and spread on Will’s bared chest, Hannibal says, “Tell me.”

Will squirms and smiles and giggles in a manner wholly unlike himself. There is a flash of teeth, a sneer threatened at the curve of lips in this Will – this blazing, altruistic, perfectly imperfect embodiment of the Will that Hannibal hungers for. Still, it is tempered by desire. Hannibal seizes it.

Will smiles a not-smile and says, “Who did you have in mind?”

Hannibal grins around teeth pressed deep in Will’s shoulder. “My butcher recently attempted to pass off a rather substandard cut of loin without batting an eye.” His runs a finger across Will’s shoulder blades and feels his need wax as goosebumps erupt in their wake.

“The insolence.” Will’s voice is one of mock-horror as he tightens his grip on Hannibal’s waist, pulls him closer. “I wonder how he’d fare with a substandard cut of beef lodged deep in his own stomach. The absolute shame of it.”

Hannibal must close his eyes, turn his head away before he speaks. “In _place_ of his stomach.”

Will makes a _tsk_ ing sound with his tongue and teeth. “That’s obviously what I meant.”

* * * * * 

Hannibal is erect and bored behind the desk in his office when his gaze lands on his calendar. He flips a few pages back.

There, three weeks before, is a small, unremarkable “U” next to the fifth day of the month. _Undead._ He turns one week back and sees a small “T” on the previous Saturday. _Teenager._ One week back, where an “H” and another “U” are alive and bleeding in the dark red pen he reserves for such entries.

He closes the calendar and sits back in his chair. 

* * * * * 

Will drives to Michigan because he does not know where else to go. And because he has always wanted to go there.

The Upper Peninsula, the Lower Peninsula, a sharp poignant up-thrust drawn into every hasty outline of the United States he’d sketched during a round of Pictionary as a child. But mostly because of Georgetown, where he’d spent his undergraduate years with Amelia.

The Michi _gander_ and not, as he now knows, the Michi _ganian_ as he’d called her the first time they’d met. They had both stood under a tattered awning outside one of the ubiquitous Clyde’s that ran through the city like a disease early into their sophomore year. Fall had leeched slowly and with pointed hesitation into winter. As a result, he was wearing a coat far too warm for the weather and she, a coat far too light.

He had spent a fretful few minutes considering whether to lend her his jacket but, in the end, had not.

After apologizing profusely for the misnomer and with a tentative smile that she returned, he’d asked her where she’d grown up. To his astonishment, she’d lifted her left hand to him, fingers together, and pointed just above the crevice between her thumb and index finger. She said the name of a village or town or city, and let it fall. Took another sip of her drink.

He had not understood her gesture and so, for a long time, did not speak. Eventually, she looked at him, looked across the street to the towering buildings of Washington, D.C., and laughed. Her hair smelled of cigarette smoke and whiskey. Her mouth had tasted much the same. When she brought her left hand back between them, backside up, fingers and thumb pressed together, he saw the shape of Michigan in the outline of her fingers.

Will had been _delighted._ Sure, if he’d roamed the earth 10 or 20 times over, would not have witnessed such a casual, innocuous display of human anthropology. And so, he’d gone to Michigan. But not to any of the spots she had had pointed to on her hand; Traverse City, at the tip of her pinky, the bridge to Mackinaw Island atop her middle, Grand Rapids, Bay City, Detroit, Gaylord, Grayling. Her eyes had gone wide as she pointed to Frankenmuth and she’d whispered in a tone that bordered on reverence, _the fried chicken, Will, you have no idea._

In Fremont, with Lake Michigan spread like an ocean towards the west, he’d felt he was drowning. 

He backtracks to Ada and stops. Purchases some land – an old farm he has no intention of toiling to crop, but where his dogs can roam. It is bordered on all sides by high, unyielding corn and he easily loses himself for hours at a time to the way the stalks bend and quiver in the wind. He imagines the fractured pieces of himself bound, immovable against the cornstalks; safe to exist as separate pieces of the indefinable William Graham, but only when tethered to the fragrant ground.

He thinks of the house he’d left behind, floating adrift and abandoned in Wolf Trap, and then thinks of it no more.

A tumbler of whiskey in one hand, his cell phone in the other, Winston noses under one of his arms. Will’s hunger has been churning in his gut and he does not know what to do.

He looks down at Winston who whines softly. “I’ll be okay, buddy. We’ll be okay.” 

Will furnishes the house properly this time. His bed is upstairs, as it ought to be. The living room is downstairs, as it too ought to be. Decorated appropriately with a couch, chairs, a coffee table. Even the guest bedroom contains the requisite bedframe, mattress, chest of drawers, and mirror, although Will does not know a single person in the world he would invite over. There is a pile of reproduced paintings stacked neatly in the hallway that he does not know where to hang.

Late at night, watching the corn dance, he asks Winston if he thought Hannibal would come. Between sips of whiskey, he asks, _how would he even know I was here?_ And, _what, exactly, would I do if he came?_ – the last of which causes Winston to growl and whine in unison so it sounds to Will like a tired, wilted threat incapable of hurting anyone. 

* * * * * 

Will’s hunger rises. 

He feels the urge to prowl at the edges of his land and wishes he didn’t, for it makes his dogs nervous and makes him doubt his sanity. 

He forces himself to eat. Sitting on the floor, the dogs around him, he shoves whatever cooked food he can get into his mouth with dirty fingers. He cannot not remember the last time he showered.

He walks to his front door and the pack rises behind him. With a tired gesture, he commands they remain still and so can half-ignore the wild swish of tails and the soft, questioning noises that sound too much like _why?_

He walks to the nearest oak tree across the bleeding, wild expanse of his front lawn. It is a huge, gnarly thing, and from behind its widest side, hidden from his house and neighbors alike, he crouches. He paws through the ground as though he has spotted something interesting. He pretends his teeth aren’t bared, that a growl isn’t building in his sternum, threatening to spill into noise.

Back inside, on the couch positioned reasonably in his living room, Winton’s muzzle rests on his forearm. Will pulls his lips back over his teeth to whisper, “But what if he doesn’t come?” He picks at the cold dirt staining his fingertips. 

* * * * * 

Will imagines he can bear it, believes he can, until he cannot. 

He strips down to his boxers despite the looming chill of Michigan in September, and scurries into the vegetation outside of his farm. He crouches low on arms and legs shrieking with discomfort, until he is swallowed into the midst of swaying corn. Until he can feel the taught prickle of rose briars at his feet, caught in his leg hair, spread like a rash against his lower back – ripe for the easy protocol of Hannibal Lecter, the Chesapeake Ripper, as he tends to Will’s wounds with the care of a mother licking what festers from her young. 

All at once, he is ashamed of his near nakedness. He wonders what became of Amelia.

He sits, pulls his legs to his chest. If he stays still long enough, maybe he too might blossom into a lean, wavering stalk unable to do anything more than drift in the breeze. 

When Hannibal finds him there, he a man possessed. Hearing Hannibal traipse through the corn, blundering and incautious of the noise he makes, Will can only collapse. He hears Winston bark, once, and then hears nothing but the thrumming echo of his heart in his ears and a low growl that builds in his chest.

He is on his feet when Hannibal appears and, for the first time, brings Hannibal down. Will’s teeth are at Hannibal’s throat and Will is spread above him. He quivers as Hannibal permits a single low, breathless gasp. 

“You found me,” Will says.

“You must be starving, Will," Hannibal says and then he bucks, almost topples Will off of him, but Will steadies himself with a roar and a bite to Hannibal’s jugular he fears has landed home. The gasp Hannibal breathes is closer to terror than Will has ever heard him make. 

“Tell me,” Will says. His tongue is flat against the indent of his teeth in Hannibal’s throat. “Tell me what you want from me.”

When Hannibal brings their mouths together, Will knows he hit rocky earth a long, long time before he’d realized he was falling. 

“All of you.” Hannibal’s words are muffled in the space between them. “Each one of you.”


End file.
